Urging passage of a resolution addressing human rights abuses in North Korea at the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and calling on the Government of North Korea to respect and protect the human rights of its citizens.

Mr. Speaker, last week Colorado experienced a very heavy snowstorm--in fact, it was a blizzard in many areas. This was good news for our state, which has been suffering from a serious drought. However, it seriously interfered with travel. As a result, I was unable to be present for votes on several measures. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows:

On rollcall No. 65, H. Con. Res. 26--Condemning the punishment of execution by stoning as a gross violation of human rights--I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 66, H.R. 868--Nicaragua Property Dispute Settlement Act of 2003--I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 67, H. Res. 109--Urging passage of a resolution addressing human rights in North Korea at the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and calling on the Government of North Korea to respect and protect the human rights of its citizens--I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 68, H.R. 314--Mortgage Servicing Clarification Act (Royce Financial Services)--I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 69, H.R. 417--Cibola Wildlife Refuge Boundary Correction--I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 70, H.R. 699--To direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a comprehensive study of the Rathdrum Prairie/Spokane Valley Aquifer, located in Idaho and Washington--I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 71, the Sherman amendment to H.R. 975 (bankruptcy bill), I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall No. 72, the Nadler amendment in the nature of a substitute to H.R. 975 (bankruptcy bill), I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 73, the Jackson-Lee motion to recommit H.R. 975 (bankruptcy bill), I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 74, passage of H.R. 975 (bankruptcy bill), I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall No. 75, on approving the Journal, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall No. 76, H.R. 1307--To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a special rule for members of the uniformed services in determining the exclusion of gain from the sale of a principal residence and to restore the tax exempt status of death gratuity payments to members of the uniformed services, and for other purposes-- I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 77, H. Res. 132--Expressing the sense of the House that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Newdow v. United States Congress is inconsistent with the Supreme Court's interpretation of the first amendment and should be overturned, and for other purposes--I would have voted ``present.''

I would have voted that way because I am not a lawyer and have not studied the relevant decisions of the Supreme court--and so I do not think it would be appropriate for me to say that the cited decision of the Court of Appeals is inconsistent with those decisions.

Last year, I voted in favor of a related (but not identical) resolution. However, as I said at that time, I did so not because I necessarily agreed that the Circuit Court's decision is ``inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence'' as that resolution said, but because I agreed that ``the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals should agree to rehear'' the matter, as that resolution also stated.

I am proud to recite the Pledge of Allegiance because I personally consider it as being neither a prayer nor a religious practice and so think its recitation is not a religious exercise but instead a verbal expression of support for our country. However, obviously not everyone shares my view. And, as I said last year, I am not prepared to conclude that the author of the Ninth Circuit decision--a long-serving judge originally appointed by President Nixon--was clearly wrong as a matter of law, even though as I understand it another appeals court, in a similar case, has ruled differently. So, I definitely think the issue needs to be resolved by the Supreme Court.

On rollcall No. 78, the Hill (Blue Dog) substitute to the budget resolution, I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 79, the Toomey (Republican Study Committee) substitute to the budget resolution, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall No. 80, the Cummings (Black Caucus/Progressive Caucus substitute to the budget resolution, I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall No. 81, the Spratt (Democratic) substitute to the budget resolution, I would have voted ``yes.''

On rollcall No. 82, on passage on H. Con. Res. 95 (the budget resolution), I would have voted ``no.''

On rollcall No. 83, passage of H. Con. Res. 104--expressing the support and appreciation of the Nation for the President and the members of the Armed forces who are participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom--I would have voted ``yes.''

I would have done so because although I have disagreed with the way the President has handled the diplomatic events leading up to war, it is now time for us all to support our brave men and women in uniform who are charged with carrying out this mission and to pray for their success and safe return home. We all hope for a swift resolution with minimal casualties--among our troops and Iraqis as well. And we must do more to protect ourselves at home. I am confident that the United States and our allies will win the war. That will not be the end, but the beginning of the more difficult task of securing the peace. Congress must commit to providing aid to rebuild Iraq and the Administration must work to repair relationships with our allies. We will need them and the rest of the international community in our corner to rebuild Iraq, bring stability to the Middle East, and win the war on terrorism.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 109) urging passage of a resolution addressing human rights abuses in North Korea at the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and calling on the Government of North Korea to respect and protect the human rights of its citizens, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution.

I thank our cosponsors for being a part of this, including the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wolf), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel), the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Wexler), the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach), the gentleman from American Samoa (Mr. Faleomavaega), the gentleman from California (Mr. Gallegly), and the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), a good cross-section of Members, a bipartisan group, supporting House Resolution 109.

Mr. Speaker, the Government of North Korea is an historical anachronism, a totalitarianist Stalinist regime under the control of the Korean Workers Party, the so-called Dear Leader, or Kim Jong-Il, a man who demands godlike reverence and enjoys a decadent, opulent lifestyle while hundreds of thousands of children and their parents starve to death.

His regime, his dictatorship, Mr. Speaker, is one of the worst systematic abusers of human rights in the world today. Inside North Korea, there are no genuine freedoms of speech, religion, or assembly. The penal code imposes a penalty of death for a wide variety of crimes against the revolution, including defection, attempted defection, slander of party policy, listening to foreign broadcasts, and imagine that, one listens to a radio show and one can be charged with crimes against the revolution, and writing letters or possessing printed material that is considered reactionary.

The regime maintains an extensive system, Mr. Speaker, of political prison camps that hold an estimated 200,000 prisoners, including entire families of those suspected of disloyalty toward the dictatorship.

As confirmed by eyewitness testimony presented before the Committee on International Relations last year, camp conditions are horrific. Starvation, overwork, and disease kill most of the camp inmates. Others are used as targets for martial arts practice or as guinea pigs for lethal tests of chemical weapons.

Christians are tortured to death for refusing to renounce their faith in one who is greater than the Dear Leader. Female prisoners are not allowed to bear additional children, and their newborns are routinely and brutally killed before their eyes, usually by smothering or having their necks broken.

Based on reputable reporting, Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 109 recounts the abominable conditions inside North Korea and exhorts the dictatorship in Pyongyang to respect human rights for its citizenry. More immediately, it urges the Department of State to support the introduction and passage of a resolution on human rights abuses in North Korea at the current session of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

At the State Department's suggestion, we included language that urges other members of the Commission to support that effort. While the Commission has censored numerous countries in recent years, North Korea has inexplicably escaped its notice. We hope that oversight will be corrected during this session.

I want to thank those 19 bipartisan cosponsors, particularly the gentleman from Illinois (Chairman Hyde); the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific; and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), the ranking member of the committee, for their support.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Royce), the distinguished chairman of our Subcommittee on Africa and a leader on issues of human rights relevant to North Korea.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 109 the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo) for her very eloquent remarks and my good friend from California (Mr. Lantos). We need a very strong show of support by our colleagues today, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of this resolution. The U.N. committee is meeting as we speak. This issue must be brought so the kind of scrutiny and, I would say, condemnation for these egregious abuses of human rights can be brought to the fore. North Korea has a horrific record on human rights; and it is about time the international community said so in one loud voice: no more.

Mr. Speaker, we have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I rise in support of this resolution urging the United States to work towards passage of a resolution on North Korean human rights abuses at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

I am a cosponsor of this resolution, and I commend the Committee on International Relations vice-chairman, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), for his attention to this issue. I also want to commend the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos), for his attention. Both of these gentlemen have spent much time, have spent much of their careers, trying to focus this body on human rights and to address human rights concerns around this world.

Last year, this House passed legislation, House Concurrent Resolution 213, recognizing the horrific plight of North Korean refugees who risk their lives to escape into China. That legislation at the time included language encouraging the Secretary of State to work to pass a resolution regarding human rights in North Korea at the 59th session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. That session began yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, North Korea is one of the worst systemic abusers of human rights in the world today. North Koreans are held hostage to their so-called Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il. North Koreans are put to death for a very wide variety of crimes against the revolution, as he calls it, including listening to foreign broadcasts or possessing printed material that is considered reactionary by that regime.

The prison camps in that regime hold an estimated 200,000 prisoners. Last year, the Subcommittee on Asia held a hearing to look at the nightmarish conditions in these North Korean prison camps. We heard testimony from North Koreans who had escaped the camps, and these were North Koreans in disfavor with that Stalinist regime, those who had been convicted of ``anticriminal acts.'' They were basically political prisoners.

As we heard their testimony, they reported to us that the inmates in those camps were being slowly worked to death. These were work camps. We heard from North Koreans who witnessed prisoners being gassed as part of a chemical weapons experiment. We also heard testimony from Dr. Norbert Vollersten, a German physician and one of the few Westerners to spend extended time in North Korea. Dr. Vollersten has launched a worldwide campaign to tell anyone who will listen what he witnessed in North Korea. Dr. Vollersten has asked why the world does not hear more and does not know more about what he describes as Nazi-type atrocities that are occurring to North Korean people.

As we know, the North Korean regime uses food as a weapon against its own people, apportioning and withholding resources based on citizens' perceived loyalty to the regime. In many parts of that country, in many counties, whole counties, whole provinces, are perceived not to be loyal enough to receive food aid.

It is largely an untold story that from 1994 to 1998 at least 2 million North Koreans perished from starvation and related diseases while nearly 50 percent of North Korean children are malnourished to the point that their physical and mental health is compromised. Responsibility for this unparalleled cruelty lies squarely with the regime of Kim Jong Il.

The upcoming session provides an opportunity, the session in the United Nations, for the administration and others throughout the world to focus on these horrific realities in North Korea which have unfortunately been overlooked. And I am convinced that a

concerted international focus on the North Korean regime's human rights abuses would advance stability in Northeast Asia. I am hard pressed to see how turning away from this ugly reality is in the interest of anyone but the North Korean regime.

Mr. Speaker, we face a critical challenge on the Korean peninsula. I urge the passage of this timely resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. First, I would like to commend my good friend, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the vice-chairman of our committee, for his continued and steadfast leadership on all issues relating to human rights.

The political, human rights and security situation in North Korea is deteriorating rapidly, Mr. Speaker. It is critically important that our Nation have a strategy for addressing the whole host of our concerns with North Korea. We indeed have a crisis on the Korean Peninsula, and the sooner the executive branch engages at the highest levels to deal with that crisis, the better.

When policymakers, journalists, academics, and Members of Congress discuss the North Korean situation, the natural focus of attention is on North Korea's dangerous and destabilizing nuclear and missile programs. North Korea's nuclear program poses a clear and present danger to all civilized nations, particularly with North Korea's increasingly advanced medium- and long-range missile program. But this legitimate focus on North Korean security issues often obscures the horrendous human rights situation in that country.

Mr. Speaker, the United States must develop a comprehensive approach to North Korea, one that allows us to tackle North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and the destruction that North Korea's leaders are imposing on their own people by their human rights policies.

Mr. Speaker, it is evident that the world has no greater abuser of internationally recognized human rights than the Government of North Korea. Over the past 8 years, North Korea's leaders allowed more than 1 million citizens to starve to death rather than to implement economic and agricultural reforms. The children who survive starvation face a life marred by permanent physical and mental disabilities caused by their severe and long-term malnutrition. Meanwhile, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Il, imports the finest foods and luxury items for himself and his entourage, living in the lap of luxury in Pyongyang.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, death and destruction are only part of North Korea's pattern of gross violations of human rights. Those citizens who make even the mildest criticisms of the government are immediately imprisoned, tortured, or killed. There is no freedom of assembly, no freedom of worship, no freedom of speech, no political freedom.

In short, Mr. Speaker, North Korea is the worst kind of totalitarian police state. The United States and other civilized nations must make it clear that vast improvements in North Korea's human rights situation must be part of a dialogue with North Korea, and normalization of relations will not occur under current circumstances.

The best way to send that signal from the international community is for the United States to pursue a resolution critical of North Korea's human rights record at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Our resolution urges the administration to undertake this initiative, and I strongly urge all of my colleagues to support this resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Guam (Ms. Bordallo), my friend and our distinguished colleague, who in the short time she has been with us has already made significant contributions to the work of this body.

Mr. Speaker, we have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 109.

North Korea has been in the news lately for a number of reasons. In recent months, it has expelled U.N. monitors, withdrawn from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted a nuclear reactor.

In addition, North Korea may have the worst human-rights record in Asia. The regime prohibits freedom of speech, religion, the press, assembly, association, citizens' movements and workers' rights. There are an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 political prisoners in work camps. Accounts by refugees and defectors indicate that inmates are subject to forced labor, beatings, torture and executions.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights convened in Geneva this week and is scheduled to be in session until April 25th. This year one of its most challenging issues will be to determine whether to hold North Korea accountable for its poor human rights records.

I strongly support H. Res. 109, which urges the Commission to pass a resolution addressing human rights abuses in North Korea, and calls on the government of North Korea to respect and protect the human rights of its citizens. if passed by the Commission, it would be a critical first step by member states of the United Nations in demonstrating a multi-national commitment to human rights.

In 1981, North Korea ratified two treaties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By ratifying these treaties, North Korea officially affirmed its commitment to internationally recognized human rights and standards. Although no single diplomatic initiative can begin to resolve North Korea's human rights abuses, this Resolution would be an important first step in bringing this issue to the world's attention.

In closing, I would like to remind my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, that on February 11, 2002, we passed, by an overwhelming vote of 402 to 6, a Resolution condemning the selection of Libya to chair the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

Libya has failed to demonstrate that it does not support international terrorism. It has also failed to demonstrate that it has abandoned its quest for weapons of mass destruction. To reward these failures with an important and prestigious appointment makes a mockery of what this Commission stands for.

That being said, if the Commission manages to persuade North Korea to open itself up to visits by U.N. human rights experts and other international observers, this would be a significant accomplishment. I urge all members of the United Nations to work towards this goal and urge my colleagues to support this Resolution.